HFConwatch

26 July 2012

As we warned would happen if Boris were re-elected, Hammersmith & Fulham Tory council has confirmed it intends to go ahead with its widely opposed scheme to build stonking blocks of luxury flats on King Street. Their one concession to public feeling has been to cap the height of these at eight stories.

This would still mean:

Knocking down the art deco cinema

Knocking down the home for the blind

Eating up a third of the small Furnivall Gardens park for a footbridge

Not including any new social housing in the development at a time of crying need for more affordable homes, with the "planning gain" money spent on doing up the town hall instead.

New Tory council leaer Nick Botterill has said, "We got it wrong with the previous King Street proposals and we have learned from it." So far, the evidence of that is thin indeed.

Yet all is not lost. The council also says "KSD [King Street Developments] will be reviewing the scheme over the coming months and a further consultation with residents’ and amenity groups will follow later in the year."

26 June 2012

In a shock move, the NHS in London is threatening health services for local people by proposing to shut the Accident and Emergency departments and other facilities at Charing Cross and Hammersmith hospitals. This is happening because Tory-led cuts mean the NHS in North-West London is facing a £332 million funding gap by 2014/15.

Hammersmith and Fulham Tories have taken a view that they have to be seen to oppose the cuts at Charing Cross hospital but they are letting Hammersmith hospital swing in the wind. All their statements - from the Tory council's anti-closure petition to Tory Fulham MP Greg Hands's website to every peep from Tory H&F councillors - mention only Charing Cross.

NHS bosses said at a meeting last Thursday that they had consulted local councils. What did H&F Tories tell them behind closed doors?

Please join in the campaign against BOTH A&E closures by coming to a public meeting organised by Andy Slaughter, MP for Hammersmith, at 6pm this Thursday, 28 June at Rivercourt Methodist Church, King Street W6 9JT.

27 May 2012

A truly shocking council meeting last week confirmed that, when it comes to housing, Tory Hammersmith & Fulham council is doing nothing for local people and is justifying this with figures plucked out of thin air.

Labour leader Steve Cowan asked what analysis had led Cllr Johnson, H&F’s Cabinet Member for Housing, and his cabinet colleagues to pick £40,000 as a household income limit for families to get onto the social housing waiting list. Cllr Johnson said he didn’t know and joked about plucking the figure out of thin air before admitting that no such analysis had been undertaken.

Steve says on his blog: "There is a housing crisis in London at the moment.... In Hammersmith and Fulham, virtually no genuinely affordable homes to buy or rent are being built.... There are no serious measures to improve conditions in the private rented sector. Instead, H&F Conservatives' housing strategy prioritises building new luxury flats for international investors often in new, ugly tower blocks detested by local residents. That's hardly the right approach, which is why my Labour colleagues and I will change that if the public vote us into office in 2014"

25 May 2012

The High Court has today ruled that Tory Hammersmith & Fulham Council have been acting illegally in pushing through unpopular plans which allow developers to make profits from the destruction of local communities.

This is a landmark judgement and marvellous news for local people who have been working hard to save their shops and businesses and neighbourhoods.

Andy Slaughter MP explains:

"Today’s decision by the High Court to uphold the Goldhawk Road shopkeepers’ judicial review of the Council’s planning policies should prove fatal to the Tory Council’s controversial planning strategy. Under these plans, first announced in 2007, much of the borough would be redeveloped as high-rise luxury investment flats, with existing homes and small businesses destroyed.

Mr Justice Wilkie handed down his judgment in the Goldhawk Road case today. He had heard evidence that the Council had broken the rules repeatedly in trying to help developer Orion build 212 luxury flats on the site of existing local businesses and affordable homes.

This has been a difficult fight, with traders, shopkeepers and local residents all pulling together to tell the council that they have simply got these plans wrong. The councillors for Shepherds Bush and I are all delighted that we could play a part in what has been a real community effort.

On a personal level, I am delighted for the Goldhawk Road traders, and their thousands of supporters. The Council should protect long-established and well-loved businesses such as Cooke’s Pie and Mash Shop from rapacious developers, not collude in their destruction. Cooke’s and the world-famous fabric shops in the same row have already suffered years of stress and uncertainly. It is always difficult to take on the Town Hall and win, but they have done so by their courage and determination – and the assistance of some very able lawyers.

This case has been made necessary by the arrogance of the Council, which is out of touch with its residents and always acts always in the interests of big developers and for political gain.

They have wasted so far over £200,000 in lawyers’ fees alone – many times this in officer time and propaganda. This is our money, which as usual they feel free to waste. Now they are talking about appealing the decision and pressing on with the demolition in spite of the Court’s verdict.

Next week the Council elects a new leader. This should be a chance for it to pause and review some of the more controversial planning projects, including Shepherds Bush Market. To spend more taxpayers’ money trying to overturn this decision or to continue to support the developer would be obscene.

All of the Council’s dodgy planning and housing policies will now be under legal scrutiny and if they do not fundamentally rethink their approach they will be back in court again and again."

Andy

The press release issued by the solicitor who acted for the traders can be viewed here.

18 May 2012

On Monday Andy Slaughter MP will be joining the staff of Hammersmith and Fulham Community Law Centre for the London Legal Walk...

…in which the whole of the legal establishment, from the Lord Chief Justice down, takes to the streets and walks in aid of legal charities.

There is a desperate need to raise funds for the internationally-renowned Hammersmith and Fulham Law Centre. After Tory Hammersmith & Fulham council withdrew all its funding, the irreplaceable work the Law Centre does in west London was severely curtailed and is under constant threat of worse. And of course, as a Shadow Justice Minister, Andy has been fighting central government as it pushes through massive cuts to legal aid.

Without the money that efforts like this raise, there is a real danger that the service that places like the Law Centre will simply disappear, leaving thousands of people helpless and adviceless in the face of legal problems.

Please sponsor Andy and help the law centre – every pound you give via this link will go directly to supporting the work of the centre and supporting the worst-off members of our community at a time when they need it most.

The borough of Hammersmith and Fulham has become the
laboratory for national Government housing policy. Where H&F goes
first, the Government will follow. And the policy at present is to
deliver no extra social rented housing despite the borough’s housing
needs.

Housing Benefit costs in London are so high because there is a
shortage of affordable housing, and in particular social rented
housing. Under Gordon Brown the Labour Government began to build new
social homes, but this has now almost entirely stopped. The
explanation, at least for the cuts in Social Housing Grant, is austerity
economics, although other projects to stimulate the construction
industry are going ahead.

But this is not the true picture. Tory policy is actually to
eradicate social rented housing, or confine it to perhaps 10% of current
tenants, those with physical or mental health conditions requiring
supported housing. Just as the blueprint for current policy (as enacted
in the Localism Act) can be read in the 2008 publication, Principles Of Social Housing Reform,
so the practice in Hammersmith & Fulham (‘Cameron’s favourite
council’ and the ‘apple’ of Eric Pickle’s eye) shows how council and
housing association homes can be gradually extinguished nationwide.

Pickles and Shapps were both briefed on the 2008 discussions and
Shapps attended the seminar which drew up the key elements of H&F
policy and discussed social rented housing in disparaging terms.

Here are the four main techniques currently being used to socially and politically change the population of the borough.

1. No Planning Consents For Social Housing
At least 13,000 new homes will be given planning consent in
Hammersmith & Fulham this year on current plans. Not one will be an
additional social home for rent. This is despite Boris Johnson’s
London Plan requiring 25% social rented homes in any such new
development, a waiting list of 8,000 families many of whom live in very
overcrowded or unfit dwellings and have waited five years or more for
re-housing, and only 6% of private accommodation likely to affordable to
HB claimants under new benefit regulations. H&F is one of the
councils moving residents to Derby and Nottingham.

2. Demolition
The first major demolition scheme is of 761 good-quality, popular, recently-refurbished houses and flats in West Kensington

After much lobbying the Council did agree to ‘replace’ the demolished
flats somewhere in the development area (which will include 7,500 new
flats). Whether residents, many of whom are freeholders or
leaseholders, elderly people or temporary tenants will take up this
offer is doubtful, given the site will be developed over 20 years.

3. Selling council properties
300 council homes are currently being sold by auction to raise in
excess of £100 million. These appear to be selling undervalue, and can
only be sold to developers rather than prospective residents under
Government rules. One featured in the BBC programme Under the Hammer.
The first call for the proceeds of sale is likely to be the purchase
of leasehold and freehold interests in West Kensington so vacant
possession can be delivered to the developer, despite earlier claims
that they would be reinvested in housing.

4. New tenancies
The Council’s new tenancy strategy, which we have been leaked in
draft but will not be published until after the Mayoral Election, takes
advantage of the Localism Act, the housing sections of which mirror Principles of Social Housing Reform.

Short term (2-5 year) tenancies with no right of succession,

Up to 80% market rents (an increase typically of 200-300%)

Discharge of housing duties permanently into the private sector, almost exclusively outside the borough

Allocation of Council accommodation no longer on the basis of need.

The real housing argument is about building homes for social rent for
households on low incomes. The Tories clearly do not want to build
any. The argument about Housing Benefit costs versus displacing
thousands or families, and the economic and social costs that will
follow, is a false choice.

27 April 2012

Welcome to my newsletter for April. This monthly report is a chance for
me to keep you up to date on what your London Labour MEP is doing on
your behalf, as well as to give you a regular analysis of developments
in the EU.

This month, I piloted my report on protections for seasonal and
vulnerable workers in the EU through its committee stages and led for
the Socialists and Democrats on the anti-terorism PNR agreement. I also
wrote for Next Europe about the state of the Greco-Turkish relationship,
as well as for Labour List about the presidential elections in France.
Please feel free to get in touch and I always welcome any feedback.

I led on this issue for the Socialists and Democrats Group, as reported by BBC Democracy Live.
MEPs achieved important concessions on rules for sharing data and also
clarified the legal position on behalf of EU citizens in 27 Member
States.

25 April 2012

The Hammersmith Tory councillors who have sneakily hatched a secret plan - which they have tried to cover up - to ensure Boris's agreement for the loathed Town Hall plans if he wins are the usual roll call of rotters.

They include Stephen Greenhalgh, Nick Botterill, Mark Loveday, Greg Smith and Andrew Johnson. And of course, Harry Phibbs. No such list of shame would be complete without him.

On which note, our attention has been drawn to yet another exposé of El Phibbo in Private Eye (in the 6-19 April issue). Last time, the Eye claimed Phibbs was pompous. This time they reveal he is a hypocrite, enjoying a 60 per cent increase in his allowance while criticising much smaller increases in local council salaries.

The Eye also recalls its description a quarter of a century ago of Phibbs as "The world's most unpleasant Young Conservative". As a grown-up, we'd say he has quite a lot of competition, not least in Hammersmith & Fulham.

So the Hammersmith Tories and Boris look likely to push through the monstrous King Street development if Boris wins. One of the many grubby aspects of this shocking story is the Tories' desperate attempt to keep their plan secret.